When I post a design that I’ve come up with in EQ, chances are I’ve had about 30 or more variations.  There are always little tweaks that can be done to improve the design and what one thinks is a great improvement, someone else might not see as an improvement at all.  When I show a design on the blog, you’re welcome to make it, to tweak it and do most anything but claim it as your own. If your design was inspired from my design, or your quilt was made from my design, I’d appreciate credit and a link back.

When using public domain blocks, especially without adding pieced sashing or a pieced border (or two), I’m fairly sure that someone . . maybe you or someone you know, has created a similar quilt.  There are only so many ways in which to use some of the blocks that have been around forever.  I don’t use someone else’s design on purpose.  If you’re creating a quilt and you didn’t base it on my design, but in the end yours comes out looking a whole lot like mine . . that happens sometimes and I’m not offended.

For those of you who have EQ and don’t use it, I’d kick your rear end if I were in the same room with you (and if you were sitting on the ground because I don’t kick very high these days!).  Turn the TV off, take the laptop to the bathroom with you, lock the door, pretend you’re having a tummy ache so no one comes near the bathroom and start playing with EQ.  It is so fun!  And, since you’ve already purchased the program . . it’s free!  You “make” as many quilts as you want and you leave behind no UFOs.  Then when you get to the one you just have to make . . that’s when the real fun begins.

Last night when I began thinking about my January QOV, I started adding blocks to my sketchbook and here are a few of the designs that I started with and you’ll see how they evolved into the final design.

Maybe seeing how I get from here to there will help some of you.  Sometimes I end up with literally dozens of quilts in my sketchbook, spending hours on a design because I keep thinking I’m so close to making it work, and yet none of them ever get to where I want them to be.  Other times, like last night, I had 18 quilts in my sketchbook within a few minutes and one of them worked.  Often, if I go back to a design that I’d struggled with, sometimes weeks or even months later, one little change will turn a design into something that works for me.

This is the same block repeated but with alternating red/blue surrounding the center star.  It isn’t a bad design but to me, it was boring and predictable.  One goal that I always have, and sometimes have to sacrifice to make a design work is this:  Try to avoid having places where a bunch of pieces come together and everything has to match.  My January Color Palette piece has a lot of points meeting points but it was something I couldn’t avoid and I liked the design enough to go with it and do a lot of matching and pinning.  The design below has too many places coming together and if the design and been one I loved, I would go with it . . but I don’t love it that much.

An alternating block was added.  Again, not a bad design.  I could have played with it some more but it wasn’t heading where I wanted to go last night.

Below, the corners were changed from half square triangles to squares and I went from red/tan/blue to some amount of scrappy and added sashing.  Not a bad design but pretty predictable and thus, boring for me.

The alternating block was added and a portion of the half square triangle on the original block was shaded blue.  From what I see, it’s just chains and a block design — boxy and nothing exciting.

For the design that I like a lot, I made two opposite sides of the star block with squares and the other two opposite sides with half square triangles.  I removed the little blue squares in the chain that were touch the star blocks to open the design up.  It’s a very simple design and a simple quilt to make.  There are few places where points from one block meet up with points from another block and it’s only corners meeting, not really “points” (as in star points, etc.).

You may never design and make your own quilt, though there’s no reason why you can’t but if you have EQ and you’re not using it, you’re missing a great opportunity to have lots of fun.